Michael
by KitKatt0430
Summary: Rip Hunter is a former Time Master and a Legend and trying ever so hard to be above it all. But that's hard to accomplish when, beneath it all, he still feels like he's that frightened, angry, cutpurse he was as a child. (Rip Appreciation Week Day 1)


Summary: Rip Hunter is a former Time Master and a Legend and trying ever so hard to be above it all. But that's hard to accomplish when, beneath it all, he still feels like he's that frightened, angry, cutpurse he was as a child.

Notes: Rip Hunter Appreciation Week - Day One - The Many Faces of Rip Hunter

This is mostly season 1 canon compliant. But I haven't watched season one in a while, so we'll call it vaguely AU for places where my memory got stuff wrong.

**Michael**

It starts when Michael picks the wrong pocket. Or maybe it was the right one. Depends on your point of view, really, and Michael's ideas of right and wrong, good and bad, change over the years.

But at the time, Michael is certain it was the wrong pocket. In part, because he got caught.

The man's wallet is full of useless paper money unlike anything accepted as local tender, and Michael's only hope to salvage this screw up is that the wallet itself is worth something. But he's caught, just a block away from reaching his benefactor (the first of many people who used Michael for his talents, manipulated him into actions not in his best interest... the start of a trend he won't recognize for far too many years) by the man he stole from, yanking Michael's arm hard to make him stop running.

Michael's arm is nearly dislocated. He's terrified and in pain and angry, so angry, while he man debates just straight up killing Michael.

"No impact on history, huh kid?"

Something about the way that phrase is uttered sends chills down the child's spine.

"Maybe we can use you after all."

* * *

"All of those kids are going to be Time Masters one day. Might already be Time Masters..." Sara still sounds shocked by the whole thing.

"It makes sense," Rip insists. "It protects Time Masters from the very thing we're now trying to prevent happening to ourselves."

"It also means that the only life you know is one where you've been indoctrinated since childhood to believe in the Time Masters cause and methods without question. I was an assassin for a shadow organization, Rip," Sara insists when it seems Rip will argue. "I know indoctrination when I see it. That kind of abuse is hard to overcome. Especially when it starts in childhood."

Rip wants to protest. Mary Xavier was an exemplary foster mother. She would not have tolerated abuse under her care nor participated in it. Except...

Except there was bullying there, wasn't there? Survival of the fittest and Michael always had a knife on him somewhere. Mary never took that away and never reprimanded the cruelty between children... bad behavior that, Rip was ashamed to admit, he still held on to all these years.

What else explained his treatment of Mick Rory? A man who reminded Rip of all his vices and the name he'd tried so hard to leave behind.

It was at the Refuge that Rip had first learned not to question the Time Masters. Their way was best, don't ask why. It has to be this way because... that was how it always was and always would be.

Had Mary Xavier truly been just another person to use Rip and toss him aside when he was no longer useful? And... what did that mean that she was still ostensibly helping him now?

* * *

The lessons of the Refuge are thus:

Reading and writing are necessary life skills. Being able to do so in multiple languages - as well as speak those languages - is also necessary. Should their translators fail them as Time Masters, they'll need to be able to blend in to the best of their abilities.

Never tattle on another child to Ms Mary. If you're injured in a fight, you tell her you fell down. You hurt yourself, no one hurt you. After all, if you could defend yourself properly then you wouldn't be injured now would you?

The Time Masters know best. Do not question them. Do not ever question them.

Disobedience means punishment. Ms Mary does not like to punish her children, but will do what's necessary. Whether its spanking or other forms of corporal punishment or taking away privileges. No one wants to have to miss supper, now do they?

Every child should know how to shoot a gun.

No child should know when and where they come from. Your parents are dead. Forget them.

* * *

Rip meets the Flash on his third solo trip in time. The Flash already knows about the Time Masters and he's not really impressed by meeting one. Yet... he takes to Rip well enough. Takes the young Time Master under his wing, so to speak.

Together they prevent Eobard Thawne from bringing the deceased Hunter Zolomon to the present as a Time Remnant and the timeline settles back into what it should be.

"Be careful," Barry Allen warns, from the safety of STAR Labs cortex, cowl off and his expression worried. "The Time Masters don't have your best interests at heart, Rip. You deserve better than how they treat you."

Rip doesn't understand what the other man means. The other Time Masters treat Rip with the same respect they have for all their fellows... don't they?

* * *

Seeing the Occulus for the first time shatters something small and fragile in Rip's chest.

They never respected him. He'd always been and always would be just a tool to the Time Masters. He'd never been a person to them.

His son, his wife... himself. They're tools. Props in a play. Marionettes with their strings cut.

* * *

Rip stares out the window at nothing. The space between time. It was lovely and should have been soothing. But Rip is seething inside. He wants to scream and tear everything down around him.

Burn it all to ash.

Mick sits beside him and something in Rip settles. He takes a deep breath, lets it out slowly.

Neither of them speaks about their grief and their loss. "You're going to be okay" somehow hovers in the air between them anyway.

* * *

"To be a Time Master, you must be willing to give up your name," Ms Mary tells Michael. "You must be willing to give up your past."

"If I don't have a name or a past, then what will even be left of me?" Michael asks, afraid.

"You'll take on a new name, Michael. A strong name, I'm sure. And you'll recreate yourself as a Time Master, with a new past once your training is done."

"All right then," the child agrees. That was when he should have ceased to be Michael.

But he was always a vicious little thing in his dreams... in his nightmares.

* * *

He meets Barry Allen again and they fight off aliens. Its thrilling and Rip might have a bit of a hero-crush. The Flash just... always seems to know what's right and what's not.

(Allen repeats his warnings about the Time Masters. Rip doesn't listen and by the time he comes to regret that decision its too late.)

Rip wishes he had the same conviction. He fakes it well enough, but if it were true...

If it were true Miranda wouldn't be waiting for him, safely tucked away in the 2150s, pregnant with their son.

It's time to visit her again and Rip just hopes he doesn't miss their child's birth. He might not have a past, but Miranda and Jonas are his future and Rip would do anything, break any rule, to protect them.

* * *

"Gideon... what are the signs in an adult that they suffered abuse as a child?"

"It depends upon the type of abuse suffered. Can you be more specific, Captain?"

Rip swallowed hard, hands shaking, because... he was not fine. Everything he'd ever known was a lie and now he had to reevaluate himself. His upbringing. His mental health...

His past and his future.

"Physical and emotional abuse."

* * *

"Captain, I'm programmed to act as a therapist or counselor as needed," Gideon tells Rip after the third time he tries, and fails, to save Miranda and Jonas. "If you need help dealing with your grief, I can..."

"No, Gideon. I'm fine. I'll be fine, once they're safe. I don't need counseling. I need to find a way to save them."

* * *

Rip stares at his crew and wonders when they became his family.

Mick sets down two beers on the table between them and says, gruffly, "looked like you could use one."

Reaching out, Rip tilts the bottle towards him a little and then shrugs and takes a swig. It's awful. Cold, American beer and not remotely Rips first choice. "Thanks," he says, voice sincere.

"What are you two brooding about?" Sara asks, dropping into a chair next to Mick.

Neither of them answer, so Sara pokes Mick in the shoulder and gives him a stern look until he talks. "Snart. Lisa Snart," Mick elaborates. "Still haven't told her about her brother. Don't know how to tell her yet."

"And you?" she asks, turning to Rip.

"Whether or not to finally let Gideon have her way and let her act as my therapist. She thinks I'm traumatized," Rip twirls the beer bottle in his hands so that it scoots slowly across the table.

"Sounds like a good idea, actually," Sara says, humming thoughtfully. "Hey, Gideon? Have room on your schedule to take me on as a patient too? I've got the whole semi-brainwashed by assassins, unhealthy relationship with my ex-girlfriend, and was dead for months until my sister revived me with the Lazarus pit and temporarily disconnected me from my soul stuff to work through. And my rage issues, though I really do seem to have those under control finally."

Mick choked on his beer.

Gideon responded almost immediately. "Of course, Sara. We can discuss setting up therapy sessions whenever you'd like."

"Awesome." Sara grinned. "You're wonderful, Gideon."

"And you're a menace, Miss Lance," Rip grumbled. "Now she's going to use you as an example as to why I should just agree to therapy."

"You know, I've got a therapist. Back in Central City. Because of my pyromania," Mick offers.

"Yes, fine, whatever. Gideon, just... schedule them for me." Rip groans and crosses his arms over the table, letting his head drop to rest his forehead against the back of his arms.

* * *

Rip takes a shuttle back to the Refuge. It's gone now, too tied up in the Vanishing Point and the existence of the Time Masters to continue to exist beyond the organization's destruction.

The former orphanage looks dilapidated and old from disuse. The garden is overgrown.

There's no sign of Mary Xavier.

It's for the best, Rip decides. He doesn't know how he'd react if he saw her, now that he's... begun to acknowledge that her way of raising children was harmful. Had harmed him.

Rip slides inside the house and checks all his old hiding places. His knives are still there and he collects one of them out of nostalgia. There are a few trinkets he left behind. Things he'd liked when he was still Michael.

He finds, now, that he still likes some of these items as Rip.

Rip Hunter, former Time Master. A man with a past and a future, neither of which he's entirely comfortable with.

But he's starting to think he'll get there one day.


End file.
